“All right.” I got out and walked round to the driver’s side. “Move over, Pixie. I … I’ll drive.”
Chapter 12
“You should have seen her, darling,” I told him. “She quite frightened me. Who could have imagined it? That nice, friendly, outgoing woman, so extrovert and funny—and that smoldering volcano of violence underneath.”
“Poor Pixie,” John said. “It sounds as though she’s been through a terrible experience and had no one to blow off steam to—until you came along. She knew you’d understand.”
“You understand, too.” That was why I loved him—one of the reasons. He always understood.
“Perhaps, but you have the experience fully to understand. You know—”
“No,” I denied. “Please, no.” He was trying again to guide me to some knowledge I did not wish to possess. I fought against knowing. It was pleasant here; we were happy. Why did he have to bring up that?
We were sitting in some odd but reassuring No-Man’s-Land that seemed to be partly our living-room at home and partly the Harper kitchen in New Hampshire. It puzzled me slightly but I had stopped wondering why. We were together, that was all that was important.
“All right, Rosemary.” He smiled at me sweetly and sadly. “All right—for just a little longer.”
As usual, we were discussing the day’s events over a nightcap before going up to bed. We always saved up the amusing incidents and stories to tell each other at the end of the day. It occurred to me that I was doing all the talking, but I didn’t want to follow through on that train of thought. I rushed on, speaking too quickly, too intensely, trying to hold the treacherous knowledge at bay.
“It was awful. And dangerous. She was driving so fast—” No—I didn’t want to think about that, either.
“I mean, Poor Pixie, to think of her having such awful dreams …” My voice faltered. “Dreams …”
“Steady, Rosemary, you’re doing fire,”
“I don’t want to do fine! Not without you! But it’s all right, you’re not like Pixie’s husband, are you? You’ll never leave me, will you? You’ll never leave us?”
“Part of me will always be with you, Rosemary. With you and Tessa and Timothy—”
“Part isn’t good enough! Promise me! Promise me!”
“Shh, Rosemary, shh …” His face was sad, so sad, and I knew that it was not that he would not promise me, but that he could not. I was trying to fight a battle I had already lost.
“Then take me with you. I don’t want to be here without you—”
“There are the children to think of, Rosemary.” He was holding me lightly in his arms. “Tessa and Timothy need you.”
“Yes, the children. That was why I was so frightened when Pixie began driving so fast—” Pixie and her problems seemed a safe subject to get back to. “She was way over the speed limit. I was afraid she’d lost control and go off …” my voice faltered, “off the road …” This was not such a safe subject, after all.
“Or crash into something—” I rushed on, unable to stop myself.
“I was afraid we’d crash … and Tessa and Timothy would be orphans—” My voice broke. “Orphans …”
A deep imperative sound ripped through the gossamer world and I felt myself falling into consciousness. The sound came again and again, forcing recognition. I sat up and found myself counting automatically.
“Mummy! Mummy!” Timothy rushed into the room. “It’s another fire!”
“Mummy—” Tessa’s voice was unsteady. “It isn’t anywhere near us, is it?”
“I don’t know.” I snapped on the bedside lamp. Both children were wide awake and unlikely to go back to sleep easily.
“I’ll find out.” Timothy darted for the doorway.
“Timothy! Where are you going?”
“Downstairs. They’ve got the code in the front of the telephone book. You keep counting—”
The whistle stopped, then started again, long insistent blasts, neatly grouped so that everyone could count them and identify the location of the blaze.
“Six blasts.” Timothy returned, bearing the telephone directory importantly. “That’s to the east of town. There isn’t much out there except farmland. It’s probably just an old barn.” He sounded disappointed.
“I hope it’s nothing worse.” I looked at my watch: four a.m. At home, at this time of the year, dawn would be well advanced; here, the sky was still dark.
“When I grow up, maybe I’ll be a fireman,” Timothy said thoughtfully. “But it isn’t as exciting at home as it is here. We don’t have whistles so that everybody can know where the fire is. Why don’t we, Mummy?”
“Not every place has it here.” Celia had explained the system to me. “It’s left over from the old days in smaller cities and towns. Before they had Fire Departments, most of the people in town were in the volunteer Bucket Brigade. The whistle was their signal to turn out and rush to fight the fire. They had to know where to go, so they decided on the code. It was rudimentary, but effective. People still use it because they still want to know where any fires are.”
“I don’t like it.” Tessa was white-faced and fretful. “It woke me up.”
“It was supposed to, silly.” Timothy was scornful. “What would be the good of a fire alarm that didn’t wake anyone up? It was supposed to get people out to fight the fire.”
“Let’s go downstairs and get a cool drink.” I offered distraction. “Then perhaps we can get back to sleep again.”
The wail of sirens in the distance carried on the still, heavy air; the smell of smoke already seemed to be encroaching. I hoped it was only a barn on fire.
In the morning, smoke still seemed to hang heavy in the air. Had the woods caught alight? I turned on the television for the newscast.
Now that we had discovered it, our set was permanently tuned to Channel 9—WMUR-TV—the Public Service Broadcasting station in Manchester, New Hampshire. They carried better programs than most commercial channels and their coverage of local news was excellent.
“ … serious fire in the Edgemarsh Lake District—” The screen sprang into life. The camera cut from the commentator’s concerned face to a scene of charred and smoking ruins, while the voice-over continued:
“A piece of local history has been lost for ever with the destruction of the Old Tithe Barn early this morning. Firemen fought valiantly to. save the building but the blaze was already too far advanced by the time the fire was discovered. More seriously, it is feared that a life, or lives, may have been lost in the fire—”
The camera cut to the twisted metal frames of two backpacks. “It is feared that hikers may have taken shelter in the barn for the night. Firemen are sifting the ashes now …”
Tessa whimpered and I snapped off the television.
“Don’t worry, Tessa,” Timothy said. “Maybe they got out safely.”
“Without their backpacks?”
“Yes, if they didn’t have much time.” It was a chance to bring home a lesson without seeming to preach. “It was more important to save themselves than anything they might be carrying. Lives are more important than possessions.”
Timothy nodded wisely, Tessa looked thoughtful. I glanced through the window at the woods outside. They no longer seemed charming and picturesque—only dangerously close to the house.
The day was off to a bad start and didn’t improve as it wore on. The post brought a letter from Nancy Harper detailing several points about Cranberry Lane housekeeping she had forgotten to leave notes about; she made up for it by explaining exhaustively. As a PS, she added:
I wonder if you’re finding my old friends and neighbors as strange as I’m finding yours? Was Lania always so bloody-minded (you see how I’m picking up the lingo!) about that silly hedge? Arnold didn’t mean to run into it—he just isn’t used to a manual clutch. Besides, it will grow out better than ever next year for having a good pruning back now. Fortunately, the kids are getting along like a house afire.
&nbs
p; PPS: Esmond is fine and dandy and sends you his love. Give Errol a great big kiss for me.
Nancy.
I put down the letter and met Errol’s knowing look. “Consider yourself kissed,” I said. “That’s as far as I’m prepared to go.”
Errol blinked at me, then got up and strolled away.
“All right, be like that,” I called after him. He gave a final twitch of his tail and disappeared under a bush.
I turned back and realized that it was not I who had offended him. Noah Peterson was walking up the path, a tentative smile on his face. No wonder Errol had left.
We had not seen Noah Peterson during the fortnight since we had caught him trying to catnap Errol and I had hoped that we would have no further encounters with him.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Blake.” It seemed that he had worn an antiquated straw boater, possibly his uncle’s, simply to be able to doff it in a suitably humble manner.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” he said quickly before I could speak. “My name is Noah Peterson. I am ordinarily a respectable law-abiding citizen. I pay my taxes, keep up my alimony payments, go to church—perhaps not as often as I should—help old ladies across the street and desire only to live in peace with my fellow men—and women. I’m your nearest neighbor up here and I think we ought to get to know each other.
“So I’ve come over to invite you and your charming children to have dinner with me tonight at Gino’s place. Or tomorrow night, if you already have plans for tonight. Or the night after that. Any time you say, but please, Mrs. Blake, let’s try to be friends.”
“Well …” It was a disarming speech—and obviously intended to be. I wondered how long he had rehearsed it. I also wondered whether I could trust him. If he got us all out of the way some night, would he arrange for someone to swoop on poor Errol and carry him away for the dastardly deed to be done while we were dining with him and providing his alibi?
“Please, Mrs. Blake. I know we got off on the wrong foot. Can’t we just forget about that and pretend that this is our first meeting—the way it should have been? Let’s start all over again, hmmm?”
“Well …” It was perfectly true, we ought to be friends with our nearest neighbor. (Fleetingly, I wondered if Lania would still be speaking to me when we got home. It sounded as though Arnold had done quite a job on her precious hedge.)
“Please?” He gave me his warmest smile.
“All right.” I came to a decision. “How do you do, Mr. Peterson. How nice of you to come round and introduce yourself. I’m very pleased to meet you and, thank you, we’ll be happy to have dinner with you.”
“Tonight?”
“All right.” Why not? “Tonight.”
“Great! Marvelous!” He caught up my hand and wrung it. “I can’t tell you how happy this has made me. This is the way it should be. And—” he nodded conspiratorially—“we’ll never even think about those other meetings again.”
Perhaps he wouldn’t, but the children weren’t going to forget it in a hurry. We would have to have a little heart-to-heart about letting bygones be bygones before they sat down at a table with Noah Peterson. We would also leave Errol safely locked up in the house.
I smiled enigmatically.
“I’ll make the reservations at Gino’s Place for tonight,” he said. “And I’ll come by and pick you folks up at about seven.”
Gino’s Place was crowded when we got there. Gino greeted us like old friends and led us to a corner table at the back. A large lobster tank was in the center of the room—presumably relocated since Noah’s uncle had demolished the original one in the window. Large sinister dark blue-green crustaceans lurched across the bottom of the tank in unsteady progress, occasionally colliding with and crawling over each other. I saw that small pegs had been inserted into the joints of their claws so that they could not fight.
“Would you like lobster?” Noah asked. “You can choose your own from the tank and they cook it while you wait. That way, it’s really fresh.”
“No, thank you.” I shuddered. “I’d feel like a murderer.” The children, looking rather ill, nodded agreement. “Let’s have something that I don’t have to sentence to death.”
“As you wish. The menus will be along in a minute.”
Other people had no such qualms. We watched as a smartly-dressed couple debated briskly at the tank while their waiter stood by. It appeared that Gino’s cousin Rudi had got his promotion to the main dining-room. When they indicated their choices, Rudi rolled up one sleeve, plunged his arm into the tank and caught up the luckless lobster which he transferred to his other hand before plunging back into the tank for the second lobster. It tried to escape, scrabbling frantically across the tank and trying to hide behind a conch shell. Uselessly. Rudi dragged him dripping from the tank and bore both lobsters—claws waving wildly—to the kitchen. The other diners applauded.
“Don’t worry,” Noah told an appalled Tessa, who was on the verge of tears. “They say the lobsters don’t feel a thing. They plunge them straight into a vat of boiling water and … er … it’s over instantaneously.”
“Who says they don’t feel a thing?” Timothy demanded. “Do the lobsters say it? They’re the only ones who’d really know.”
“Well, never mind,” Noah said comfortingly. “We’ve already decided we’re not going to have lobster. Now—” he rustled his menu—“let’s decide what we are going to have.”
Perhaps Americans have become desensitized to violence. Their television sets pour out a constant stream of muggings, murders, car crashes, beatings, rapes and other horrors masquerading as entertainment. There were nights when the news was even worse. Even driving along their highways, one had to constantly avert one’s eyes from the squashed bodies of small animals who had tried to cross the road against the stream of endless traffic. So much violence everywhere. Perhaps they didn’t even notice it any more.
“I’ll have the baked scallops,” Noah ordered. He leaned forward and confided. “Pitti-Sing is exceptionally fond of scallops. I’ll ask for a doggie-bag, in this case a kitty-bag, at the end of the meal and bring some home for her.”
“I’ll have the broiled liver,” Timothy said. “And I’ll have a kitty-bag, too. Errol is crazy about liver.”
“I’ll have a kitty-bag—” Tessa went straight to the point. “And then I’ll have fried chicken. Chicken is Errol’s absolutely favorite food.”
“And you, Rosemary?” Noah was looking disgruntled. It had not been his intention to provide a banquet for the animal he hated with a deadly passion. “What, in your opinion, is the food Dear Errol most likes to eat?”
“Errol,” I said flatly, “will eat anything that doesn’t eat him first.” I continued to study the menu. I seemed to have lost my appetite since the episode of the lobsters.
“May I suggest the Steak Diane, madame?” Rudi leaned over me solicitously. “It is cooked at the table before your eyes—very delicious.”
“Not tonight.” It was irrational to dislike the man because he had done his job, but I couldn’t help it. I tried to keep the distaste out of my voice. “I think I’ll have the Chef’s Salad.”
“Very good, madame.” Rudi deftly twitched the menus out of our hands and disappeared. The wine waiter took his place and went into a huddle with Noah over the wine list.
“Look, Mummy,” Timothy said. “Look who’s over there. It’s Greg and Lois!”
They looked up, alerted as he called out their names. For a fleeting instant there was a curiously hunted look on both faces.
“Hi, Greg! Hi, Lois!” Timothy waved to them. “Who’s minding the camp?”
“Timothy!” He was learning bad manners from his new friends.
Greg and Lois exchanged glances, then rose reluctantly and came over to our table. I began to understand the hunted look: a Camp Counsellor is never off duty. Not when there’s a parent or child anywhere in the vicinity.
“Hello, Mrs. Blake,” Greg said resignedly. “Hi, Tess, Tim, Noah �
��”
Lois echoed his greeting. She was wearing a cool dark green full-skirted frock tonight, the lighter green jade frog swung from a gilt chain around her neck. I was suddenly glad that frog’s legs weren’t on the menu.
“Benjie Adams is holding the fort tonight.” Greg answered Timothy’s question, looking directly at me. He evidently thought I might be worried about who was minding the camp. “He’s Deputy Administrator. You haven’t met him yet because he’s just arrived. He took a little vacation after his college term ended. Very good man—all the kids like him.”
“I’m sure they do,” I murmured, since he seemed to be expecting some response.
“Benjie worked for us last year, too. Maybe you remember, Noah? He’s terrific at woodcraft, swimming and archery—”
“Hey, Greg, climb down, boy,” Noah said soothingly. “You don’t have to sell us. What’s the matter? Chief Rogers on your back again?”
“And how!” Greg passed a weary hand across his forehead. “They’re trying to pin the new fire on the Camp. He was up there all morning—and it was the Changing of the Guard again. He’s working on the theory that’s got something to do with it. He’s got this crazy idea that arson has become some sort of passing-out ceremony.”
“It’s mad!” Lois said heatedly. “Totally mad! None of the kids would do a thing like that. Besides, I did the bedcheck myself last night. They were all in their beds and sound asleep long before the fire started. And when those kids sleep, it would take an earthquake to wake them. I tried to tell Chief Rogers that, but he wouldn’t believe me. He thought I was lying to protect my job.”
“You can see how he’d figure that way.” Greg was trying to be fair. “Maybe we would lie if our jobs were at stake—but they aren’t. He can huff and he can puff all he likes, but there’s no way he can close down the Camp just because he’s suspicious of it. We’re booked almost solid right through to Labor Day and he hasn’t the authority to close us down—” Greg’s voice was rising. “We’ll take it to court and put up such a fight that it will be his job on the line!”
Whiskers & Smoke Page 11